“We expect our first quarter to be solid across all
businesses, driven by robust revenues similar to last year’s
performance,” Jain, 50, said at a conference in London today.
“More encouragingly, we expect a positive development for
expenses in the first quarter, driven by effects from our cost-reduction effort in the second half of 2012.”

The world’s biggest investment banks profited from a
market rally after the European Central Bank stepped in to stem
the debt crisis. Deutsche Bank unveiled a plan in September to
cut an annual 4.5 billion euros ($5.8 billion) in costs by 2015
by firing staff and combining units to bolster profits.

Deutsche Bank, based in Frankfurt, is scheduled to report
first-quarter earnings April 30. The first quarter accounted for
the highest quarterly share of the firm’s revenue in the last
two years. It reported profit of 1.38 billion euros in the first
three months of 2012 from revenue of 9.19 billion euros.

Risk Declining

The ECB’s actions, which included defending the euro and
pledging to buy the bonds of distressed nations provided they
sign up to a bailout, have “led to relatively robust volumes
especially in foreign exchange and fixed income,” Jain said.

“Clearly there’s been an increase in corporate activity as
well,” he said.

While volatility “picked up a little bit over the last few
days” because of uncertainty over the rescue of Cyprus, the
risk of Europe’s sovereign debt crisis shocking markets has
declined, Jain said.

“Our fundamental outlook remains the same,” he said.
“While the possibility of an extremely disruptive event in
Europe has not been eliminated completely, the risk of a tail
event has been truncated quite substantially.”

The bank has boosted capital levels this year by reducing
risk, Jain said.

Deutsche Bank, which is the least capitalized of Europe’s
four biggest investment banks, will reach a goal of raising its
core Tier 1 capital ratio to 8.5 percent at the end of March
from 7.8 percent three months earlier, Jain said.

Jain, who has a masters degree in finance from the
University of Massachusetts in Amherst, became co-CEO in June
last year. He previously headed Deutsche Bank’s investment
banking unit.